


Deadly Afarition

by esotericspell



Series: Inheritance, Season One [4]
Category: Charmed (TV 1998)
Genre: Charmed Next Generation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-04
Updated: 2020-12-10
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:07:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27872029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/esotericspell/pseuds/esotericspell
Summary: Inheritance, Episode ThreeThe Charmed Ones fought for and earned their happy ending. Unfortunately, their children must do the same.The race to dethrone the Source is on, as the witches decide to get proactive and the underworld takes notice. Chris finds himself in hot water after a date-gone-awry, and it's come time for Melinda to eat crow.
Series: Inheritance, Season One [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1877485
Kudos: 2





	1. The Eclipse

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to episode three! I'll be sticking with one update, twice a week, for the foreseeable future, but if I drop to just one per week, or disappear for a bit, it's because my life got crazy again. Just a head's up.

**The Eclipse**

The call came in when the sun vanished. As throngs of curious skygazers gathered on the sidewalks wearing a variety of specialty glasses—or peering through tubes like sailors—Inspector Ingram and her partner Morais sped through mid-afternoon traffic to Bayview. All she knew about the incoming case was gunshots, car wheels peeling away, and one dead.

Ingram considered herself an amateur astronomer—was in the midst of charting Jupiter’s path across the night sky, in fact—but a potential murder victim trumped a solar eclipse.

Her dedication wasn’t shared by Morais, as he craned his neck out of the window. Ingram caught the movement out of the corner of her eye, grabbed a fistful of Morais’ jacket, and yanked him away from the window.

“You looking to fail your next eye exam?” she asked.

Morais responded with a shrug. Buzzing chatter on the radio filled the silence; in a city this large, there was always something nefarious going on. The sun was just beginning to emerge from behind the moon when the Inspectors turned the last corner. Neither of them bothered with checking the address; a squadron of police cars and an ambulance signalled their target, clear as day.

A pair of officers were speaking to two women, presumably the neighbors who had made the initial 911 call. Four more meticulously photographed a short stretch of yellowing grass alongside the outside of the house. Fewer officers were loitering inside, for which Ingram was grateful, not the least of which because the immediate room from the front door was in complete disarray.

The Inspectors slipped into a familiar routine. Morais sought out the senior officer on site while Ingram glanced around. Ingram pulled a small tablet out of her satchel and began with preliminary notes. The mess in the living room was unnatural. Compared to the neatness of the adjoining kitchen—clean but cluttered in a lived-in kind of way—the deep crack down the middle of the coffee table, overturned bookcase, and picture frames broken on the floor indicated a struggle or a fight.

Down the hallway, surrounded by kneeling analysts and a medical examiner, was the body. Morais rejoined her as she approached.

“Forced entry,” he murmured. “Vic’s been id’d as James Sasta. Lived here for two years. Neighbors say he seemed normal when they saw him this morning. They heard gunshots shortly after one and called it in.”

“Anything on the perp?” she asked, almost casually. This early in the investigation, there was little chance of identification.

Morais shook his head doubtfully. “There are large boot prints outside the bathroom window. Probably a man, could be a woman, might not even be our suspect at all.”

“This was a bold attack,” Ingram noted with a nod back to the living room. “It’s the middle of the day, the living room was trashed, and by the look of the blood splatter, it wasn’t a handgun.”

The mention of blood drew the Inspectors attention back to the body. Ingram could practically taste the warm, metallic scent of blood hanging in the air, originating from the seeping pool beneath the motionless man. It spread out, inch by inch, on the threadbare carpet, turning ecru to murky red. Ingram had long since lost the wonder of how much blood the human body actually held in her ten years of investigative experience, but this case tested her limit. The walls to the left side were splattered with red, dribbling down from a spot, just above Ingram’s eyeline, a few paces from the doorway. Congealing on the carpet beneath the splatter was a pile of pink and grey Ingram immediately identified as flesh and brain matter.

“As if we just wouldn’t see with the sun out?” Morais asked. The statement reminded Ingram of the cop shows from the early aughts she watched as a kid, where smart-mouthed officers always had a quip on the tips of their tongues, except Morais’ voice lacked any of the levity required to classify it as a joke. Morais limited his occupational humor to the coffee maker and occasionally, his deskmate’s purple prose reports.

The partners stepped gingerly down the hallway, mindful of a half dozen already taped off areas, designated with white, numbered cards, where officers had already noted evidence.

The analysts acknowledged them first. Ingram didn’t recognize the woman with red hair, but the man next to her was familiar. The intense heat of the afternoon pasted his choppy brown hair to his forehead, and his skin was glossy under a thin sheen of sweat, but only the occasional huff, not strong enough to lift the hair off of his forehead, gave any indication he suffered from the humid temperatures.

“Mark,” Ingram greeted, forgoing a handshake.

Mark nodded at them. He’d worked alongside the department for six years, more than enough time to build a cordial familiarity with the Inspectors. The woman must have been a new transfer.

Introductions dispensed in a matter of seconds and the group moved back into business.

“GSW to the abdomen, left shoulder, and face,” stated Cary, the medical examiner. “You’ll know more when we complete the autopsy.”

As the Inspectors watched, Mark, Cary, and Farrah placed the body into a black bag, zippered it shut, and then loaded the bag onto a stretcher for removal. Cary departed as well, already chattering into the recorder on his tablet.

The bloodstain on the carpet appeared even larger without the body covering most of it. There wasn’t much Ingram could glean from it so she focused on the wall James Sasta had been facing when he was shot. Close to the doorframe, concealed from view by the distracting presence of the blood splatter next to it, was a small hole in the panelling, and embedded within was the tell-tale gleam of a bullet. Good. Later, they’d use the bullet to match to a gun, which would hopefully lead them to a suspect, if one hadn’t emerged already.

The area marked for evidence retrieval, Ingram moved on. As her eyes flitted over the panelling, searching for any irregularities, a wave of heat buckled her knees. For a moment, panic flared. This wasn’t the omnipresent hug of a warm, fall day (or the hot, fall day it actually was), and it wasn’t the same as came from heaters.

It was as if she were in the centre of a whirlwind of fire. Sweat manifested on the exposed portion of her skin, and in the cracks and crevices of her body. The moisture evaporated from her tongue, even though her mouth was closed, and she swore she smelled burning hair.

Then, the freak heat wave was gone, just as quickly as it arrived. The walls and carpeting fibers were unburnt, her hair whole in its braids, and the clean, white linen of her shirt was unmarred by soot. The only indication of the incident was the sudden dryness of the air, as if the humidity had been burnt away.

She couldn’t help but shoot a glance at her partner and Mark. They stared back, and she figured the confusion on their faces mirrored hers.

Morais’ eyes slid upwards, to the tiled ceiling, searching for a vent or register as a source, she presumed. Ingram did the same, on the floor. They both came up empty.

No shouts echoed from the other rooms, or passed through the thin walls from the officers outside, so there hadn’t been a flash fire or an explosion.

“You felt that, right?” asked Morais, uncharacteristically uncertain.

It was an unnecessary question, in Ingram’s opinion. The sweat had to be as visible on her skin as it was on his, a thick, sleek coating more typical in a gym than a crime scene. Still, she nodded.

“Like the fires of hell,” she confirmed. “And we were in the middle.”

Mark cried out in alarm and propelled backwards in a single, quick motion. Ingram and Morais both brought their hands to their holsters instinctively, and relaxed when no enemy appeared.

“It flashed,” explained Mark in a raspy huff. “The blood flashed.”

“Flashed?”

“It turned white, just for a moment.”

After a momentary perusal of the blood pool—still red-- Ingram sought Morais’ gaze and found disbelief.

“It was probably a trick of the light,” suggested Morais, casually, despite the weirdness they’d all just felt.

Mark shook his head, too vigorously for the natural heat of the day. Ingram saw him sway slightly. 

“The blood turned white,” he insisted, his mouth staying open like he had more to say, but was overcome by a sudden bout of bashfulness.

Ingram natural instincts to dig took over. “And what?” she pressed.

Mark’s eyes slid down to the pool a few paces beyond his feet. “And I saw… fire made sentient,” he admitted slowly.

“Fire made sentient,” drawled Morais. Ingram doubted her partner intended on sounding so dismissive—even if that was how he felt—but the preceding minutes had apparently pushed him to his limits. In a unsubstantive assessment, Ingram guessed the mysterious heat wave had startled him and he was overcorrecting within the realm of certainty.

Mark’s face hardened immediately, in a manner Ingram recognized from many of her interrogations, the instinctual clamming up of someone who—for good or ill—knew further comment would be to his detriment.

He laughed, but the emotion was clearly forced. Mark’s eyes flitted to them in a sudden panic. “It must have been spots in my eye. From staring so long.” So please don’t report me to pysch, Ingram guessed, was how that sentence would have ended.

Morais accepted the feeble explanation, despite it clearly being a lie, because he diverted his attention back to the case. Ingram made a mental note of the incident, and did the same.

The Inspectors moved away from the hallway. They lost track of Mark within minutes, the two parties pulled away by different duties. Their report later made no mention of the flash of heat they both were beginning to believe was simply a hallucination, and no suggestion of health leave for Mark ever made its way to the Captain’s desk.

They didn’t see fire-come-alive staring back at them, crackling lips widening into a wicked smile, as it made its decision.


	2. The Plan

**The Plan**

With the patience of toddlers two hours past their bedtime and hopped up on sugar, they waited the last few minutes. Pru passed the time ticking the seconds down with silent pats to her thigh, Wyatt eyes closed, sensing his surroundings, and Melinda by shifting her weight from right to left foot and back again. Junior watched their target with his eyes glazed over, and Chris, under the disapproving gaze of his mother, somehow typed out a message on his phone with the screen darkened to emit no light.

It wasn’t exactly the most encouraging sight—but also, not the worst, so the Charmed Ones let it slide. After all, this wasn’t the mothers nitpicking and henpecking over every motion. This was a tiny, measured leap of faith. They were there to assess their children’s demon-hunting skills in the wild, from start to finish. This was the next generation’s mission, the specificities decided by the kids, all structured around several key lessons from their moms.

Lesson Number One: Make a Plan.

Weighing lethality versus imperative, the target had been chosen, and the kids were responsible for reconnaissance. There had been slight bickering then, between two factions, over exactly how much they needed to know before vanquish time—exaggerations on both sides and more than healthy name calling, but to their credit the five of them did eventually come to an agreement. The kids were then to make a plan—which ended up too explosive for the Charmed Ones’ liking, so their mothers had to do a little revising.

Lesson Number Two: Follow the Plan.

Plans were meant to be followed and timelines were important, hence the waiting.

The minute ticked over, and Phoebe nodded for the kids to begin.

Junior disappeared into an orb, and reappeared in the middle of the lair looking properly bewildered. He glanced about in movements that appeared natural, and in a calculated display of his orbs, attracted every eye in the lair.

‘Every eye’ amounted to eight, with eight ears, four noses, and an ungodly number of teeth; two eyes, two ears, and one nose more than expected.

Their target was the woman in the middle, easily identified by her blue skin, pupil-less black eyes, and double rows of sharp, pointed teeth. According to the Book of Shadows, Zennika’s preferred method of killing was to swallow her prey in two bites, but if that proved too troublesome, she also had the ability to disguise herself and attack with the element of surprise.

The other three demons were her bodyguards. The Book hadn’t known anything specific, only the mention that she rarely was alone, but through the kids spying they’d gleaned the knowledge that the demons were fast, strong, and even worse in a group, owing to one ornery characteristic about their specific kind. Each demon had a different glyph carved into its forehead, corresponding to the energies it infused itself with. In contrast, there were three known vanquishing potions, based on nightshade, wormwood, and lupine essences, and woe be to the witch who used the wrong potion with the wrong glyph.

Hence, the elaborate plan.

Junior jerked in feigned surprise, and made a show of fumbling through his jacket pocket. A vial fell from the pocket and broke on the stone ground. “Oops,” shrugged Junior, insincerely, as a thick cloud of dark grey smoke filled the lair.

Junior was under attack immediately—or would have, if he hadn’t orbed unseen through the obscuring cloud. Instead, the demons converged on each other with high pitched squeals and low growls.

Chris, Pru, and Melinda moved in, ignoring Zennika entirely to focus on her bodyguards. Zennika was Wyatt’s responsibility, more to keep her occupied than anything. As Wyatt displayed some of his flashier powers, Chris, Pru, and Melinda, each equipped with a specific vanquishing potion targeted one of the bodyguards.

Except that two of the potions missed.

Pru squinted her eyes, trying at last minute to correct the course of her throwing arc. She almost succeeded. Melinda didn’t have that luxury. Once the ruby-coloured potion vial was out of her hands, it had only one path: right past the demon’s head, into Pru’s target. Swathes of ruddy smoke funnelled into the demon’s nostrils and his eyes gleamed in a golden light.

Chris’ vial hit his demon in the chest, slightly above the heart, and dissolved into oblivion. He smirked, oblivious that his sister and cousin had failed. An errant swipe from the demon behind him sent Chris to the ground, clutching at the open wound behind his left ear. Melinda ran forward to protect him, throwing herself at the demon in more of a preventative measure than an attack. This left Pru to face who had been Melinda’s target. Pru strode forward, testing her magic against the resistances of the demon.

Although they were supposed to be joined by at least one of Chris, Pru, or Melinda, Wyatt and Junior faced Zennika together. They stuck to the plan, almost to the letter, in timed motions slightly too consistent to appear natural. The men slipped into the defensive, using their orbs instead of their fists. Wyatt appeared a dozen steps in front of Zennika, the bright lights of his whitelighter power drawing the demon’s attention. When Zennika approached with a wide, murderous grin, Wyatt orbed out of her clutches.

This left Zennika facing the battlefield, where Pru, Chris, and Melinda fought against the bodyguards. Zennika had a clear shot at the distracted witches, so in orbed Junior, now holding a gleaming athame in his hands, forcing the demon’s attention towards him instead. Zennika took few steps and then lost her target into a flurry of blue lights. Junior and Wyatt traded off, drawing their target here to there, waiting for the signal to move into the next phase of the plan.

It didn’t come.

Lesson Number Three: Improvise.

There were still two bodyguards, and the three witches were struggling, almost to the point of the Charmed Ones stepping in (Phoebe providing the tie-breaking vote, though the displeasure on her face indicated she was not happy with the situation). Even worse, one of those demons had become ascended, imbued by Melinda’s errant potion—twice as strong, and nearly impossible to vanquish.

Chris and Pru crashed together in a heap at the foot of the Ascended Bodyguard, while Melinda ducked under the swipe of the other. She dropped low, gave an irritated sigh, and flicked her fingers. Her opponent froze, but the power had no effect on the Ascended, or Zennika beyond. Still it allowed her a moment to rise and block the advance of the Ascended to her brother and cousin. Melinda’s punch had little effect, and the three backed away to regroup.

“He’s tough,” said Melinda in a grumble. 

“He wouldn’t be if you had hit the right demon,” rebutted Chris.

Pru said nothing. Instead, she pulled a grey cloth satchel from her jacket pocket and dumped the three vials into her palm. As the Ascended approached, Pru tested the vial colours in the feeble light and silently tossed the murky blue potion at the still-frozen demon. After a flash of light, all that was left was the tail end of his scream of rage.

“Guess we did need the backup potions, huh?” Pru proclaimed to her companions, sounding both victorious and vindicated.

Spared a response by the nearing Ascended Bodyguard, Chris flung his hand out and managed to telekinetically send the demon backwards a foot and a half. Chris kept his hand out. The demon tested his impromptu prison in taunting movements, a push of the hand and then a scuff of the knee. Chris grunted. “Not going to be able to hold him for long.”

Melinda shifted her stance to the side and brought her fists to the ready while Pru clutched the remaining two potions.

“How do we vanquish him now?” asked Pru, to which Melinda shrugged and Chris grunted again. Then, in an instant, the demon vanished. The next second, the demon was back, and in two places.

Behind the demons, Wyatt and Junior stopped short and each looked sheepish. The situation practically explained itself: Zennika had slipped the trap and shifted into the shape of her last, remaining bodyguard.

Henry Junior and Wyatt orbed to their allies. They had barely corporealized when the two demons leapt into action, so the two men clamped their hands down on whoever’s shoulder was closest and orbed the entire group to the opposite end of the lair.

This time, when the demons advanced, Wyatt was ready. He sent a wave of heat in their direction, powerful enough to vanquish a horde of lesser demons, possibly even one mid-level demon if it was in the epicentre. These demons, however, avoided the vanquish. One dove to the side with a speed previously unseen and the other hunkered down as the wave passed, and only appeared slightly singed when the magic receded.

Wyatt tried again, with similar results. “That one is avoided me for a reason,” he guessed with a nod towards the demon on the left, who escaped the confines of the wave both times.

Pru stepped forward. “Let me help.”

With Pru holding the demon in place—barely—Wyatt resent the wave once again. This time, the magic found its mark, and the lair was one demon fewer.

The remaining demon shifted back, though the action wasn’t met with relief from the Halliwells. Zennika was just as dangerous as herself.

Though now, at least, they could fall back to the original plan.

In relative unison—Junior lagged behind slightly—those who could, transported into the ether, leaving only Melinda. Zennika darted for her prey, but Melinda met the demon halfway with a slide. They both fell to the ground.

Since she’d prepared for the movement, Melinda was able to roll out of Zennika’s reach before the demon found her footing. Nothing further could be done, however, as blue and pink lights descended from the heavens, surrounding Zennika, and reformed as witches brandishing athames. Three of the daggers missed, with Zennika avoiding the attempt by Pru and Chris, and Wyatt having been more concerned with not slicing one of his family members is such small quarters. Junior, however, got close enough to emerge with blood-stained athame.

Wyatt uncorked a potion vial with only a hint of colour. Chris held out a hand and his face scrunched together, concentrating only on maintaining his power to draw the blood off of Junior’s athame, maintain the miniscule droplets, and carry them through the air to drop into the potion in Wyatt’s hand. The potion immediately turned burgundy. Melinda had kicked up a flurry of dust to help disguise the movement, and as Wyatt recorked the bottle and let it fly towards Zennika, the five witches backed away.

Chris let out of whoop of triumph when the demon finally was vanquished. The witches turned towards the entrance to the lair, where their mothers waited.

The Charmed Ones attempted at stony faces, but faced with the grinning visages of their children, even Piper had to crack a small smile.

“That was… alright,” Paige declared with a drawling hum.

Phoebe’s smile turned sly. “You managed bare minimum.”

“And didn’t die,” concluded Piper, with a heavy stare at her middle child. In response, Wyatt reached with his right hand and healed the wound behind Chris’ ear.

In the middle, Junior made a huff of protest. “Come on, mom, we were awesome!”

Paige’s expression turned serious and she folded her arms. Beside her, Phoebe’s smile vanished and Piper frowned.

“You kids were _good_. I wouldn’t say awesome.”

Evidently the Charmed Ones had learned from their previous experience in this situation. None of them expressed surprise when their kids focused solely on Paige’s second sentence. As the protestations came in, the Charmed Ones rebutted with ease.

“We kicked Zennika’s ass!”

“Barely—with our plan.”

“Barely? Chris only bled a little. The rest of us weren’t even hurt.”

“Callousness towards your brother is not helping your cause.”

“I’m _fine_ , and we had those demons handled the entire time.”

“You made amateur mistakes that could have gotten you killed.”

Chris groaned and flung his arms out wide. It didn’t help his case that a rickety table across the cavern crashed into the wall, copying his movements.

Rolling her eyes, Paige re-crossed her own arms. She sighed. “Why do you take everything we say as a challenge?”

“Because it is?” Pru rebutted.

Phoebe’s face softened, and her sisters relaxed their stances. “We don’t want you getting arrogant and careless—that’s how you get hurt. Still, we can admit when you’ve done well.”

“That was a good vanquish, and soon enough it will be awesome” said Piper sincerely, though she struggled momentarily on ‘awesome’. “We’ll start again tomorrow, after your lesson.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Yep. The whole process. If we can’t stop the new Source, we’ll make sure he doesn’t have any underlings.”

This time, the reaction was mixed, though mostly positive. Chris and Melinda brightened, Wyatt nodded, and Junior remained neutral. Of the five, only Pru looked perturbed, with pursed lips and clouded eyes. Still, she masked her fear quickly and eventually exhaled in a long, slow, breath. Piper sent her a reassuring smile.

After a brief glance at the watch on her wrist, Piper added, “It’s not too late. I can whip something up if anyone is hungry.”

“No more cookies!” Junior rebutted immediately, with a feigned look of horror. “I don’t want to see another one until, at least, next week.”

“Stalwart,” said Paige dryly.

Chris pulled out his phone once more. “Seven thirty,” he affirmed.

“That means I don’t have to cancel,” commented Pru with a quick sigh of relief. “Sorry, Aunt Piper that’s a no from me.”

“Me too,” added Wyatt. “I have a draft to commission.”

“I should probably shower,” mumbled Chris to himself, scrubbing at the blood stain behind his ear with the pads of his fingers.

“Me and NASA need to have a word,” Melinda said to her mother. Then, to Junior: “Mind orbing me there?”

He nodded solemnly. “I appreciate your sacrifice,” Junior responded, again with affected gravitas.

In a dazzling array of lights, all five disappeared, leaving only the Charmed Ones.

“Did either of you follow any of that?” asked Phoebe with a laugh.

Paige seemed to consider the question for a moment, pursing her lips and scrunching her forehead. Then, her face smoothed. “It all sounded legal to me, so good enough,” she concluded eventually.

“Well,” drawled Piper. “Am I making dinner for two or four?” she asked her sisters.

After an affirming look with Paige, Phoebe suggested, “How about six?”

Piper nodded once and rotated her right hand in an ushering motion. “Six it is. Come on, get us out of here, Paige.”

With joined hands, the Charmed Ones orbed from the lair, leaving only four scorched streaks on the floor and a trailing wisp of smoke in the air.


	3. Melinda I

**Melinda I**

Melinda had cornered her prey. At least, that’s what she told herself, standing just beyond the view from the café’s windows. Cornered her prey sounded better than asked a co-worker to look at the schedule, and it allowed her some measure of dignity—dignity which would soon be in short supply. She didn’t have much dignity to begin with, what with throwing it around like confetti whenever a mildly uncomfortable experience reared its head, so what miniscule scraps still existed on the fringes of her mind needed to be preserved. There was, after all, more witch training with her mother the next morning, a fumbling apology to her cousin after that, and a make-up date with a whitelighter-to-be to get through next week. Running out of dignity part way through would leave her with what? Self-reflection? _That_ was a disaster better left avoided.

So, she had cornered her prey. He wasn’t visible from her vantage point—evidently no one had dumped cappuccino on snippy lady’s boots—but she knew he was inside. A year and a half of experience had taught her that he was bound to the building with the invisible chain called Management. Whether it was forms to fill, calls from suppliers, complaints from those above and below the chain of command, or customers with impossible orders, no doubt he was working on four different tasks at the moment, and she was about to make it five.

“Alright, loser, let’s do this,” Melinda muttered to herself, acting as her own motivator. She squared her shoulders and hefted open the glass door before she could come up with a decent excuse.

The wafting aroma of coffee, yeast, and barley was a thick wall of familiarity, if not particularly pleasant combined together. So too was the chatter spread across tables, coupled with the hum and scrapes of the kitchen in the background.

Melinda bypassed the queue and slipped behind the counter.

“Hey, Linh,” she greeted quickly and nodded towards the hallway leading away from the storefront. “Eric in his office?”

Linh nodded once while typing in her customer’s order. “He was supposed to be helping me tonight, but…” she trailed off, indicating the line of half a dozen waiting patrons whose faces alternated between barely suppressed impatience and complete blankness.

Moving away from the counter, Melinda flashed Linh a sheepish smile. “Well, I’m about to add to your problem. Hopefully.”

“Honestly, if it means I don’t have to work with the new kid anymore, I’d say it’s worth it,” came Linh’s dry response.

Linh turned back to the queue, so Melinda let her work.

The noise of the storefront briefly merged with the clamour of the kitchen as she moved away, and then died to a soft muffle as she neared Eric’s office. His door was open, as was the norm, and she could hear a quiet, one-sided conversation happening beyond.

Summoning one last burst of confidence, Melinda rapped her knuckles on the door and moved into view as Eric verbally bade her to enter.

If he felt any irritation at her presence, he hid it well. Melinda chose to take this as a good omen and properly entered the small office. While Eric brought his prior conversation to a close, Melinda amused herself by taking a quick glance around. It wasn’t a particularly interesting room—a few motivational posters, half a dozen framed certificates, stacks of papers (corners aligned), and a large poster board with all the employee’s names, a few scattered notes, and stickers in the shape of doughnuts. Her name was still there, in between Dani and Lee, with two stickers and many more notes. She needed to make sure her name didn’t come down.

“Melinda” Eric greeted, finally ending his call. He paused, while there wasn’t much change in his features, she caught the movement of his brows drawing together. “Your final cheque has already cleared.”

She couldn’t help but shuffle in her place. “I’m actually hoping that it wasn’t my last paycheque.”

This time, the confusion that flashed across his face was clear. After a longer pause, he hesitantly asked, “Are you asking for a reference?”

“Yes,” Melinda responded immediately, instantly unsure of her own reasoning. Then, she scrambled to get the conversation back to where she wanted it. “And you can send it to yourself.”

Yes, she knew she was an idiot.

She guessed Eric recognized it too, but was too polite to mention it immediately. “I don’t understand,” he responded after another long moment.

“I want my job back.”

Another pause, one seemingly without end. Melinda found herself shuffling again, and had to bite down further comments. If there was one thing she’d learned in the past three weeks of job hunting, it was the less she said, the better.

“I can’t say I’m surprised,” declared Eric eventually.

“Really?” Melinda shot back, shocked enough to lose all verbal filter in an instant. _She_ certainly hadn’t expected to crawl back to Hava Java, and she ought to know herself the best.

Eric adopted a lofty tone, just subdued enough not to completely raise Melinda’s hackles, but still enough that she had to stop her feet from taking the rest of her body promptly out the door. “You wouldn’t be the first,” he said.

“But I _quit_ ,” she found herself saying. 

Eric nodded once. “And now you’re back.”

Every part of her plan, such as it was, indicated now was the time for her to grovel. Play up her reputation and admit she made an impulsive, stupid mistake. That, once again, her emotions had run wild and Melinda just didn’t have the strength of character to hold onto rationality.

The words travelled up and then stuck in her throat, burrowing into the flesh like a clamp into a rockface.

She always did have an unhealthy love of free climbing.

Eric knew it too. He stared at her, the blatant expectation in his eyes pinning the lump in her throat just underneath her jaw.

She forced the lump down, even as the part of her that liked paying her share of the rent on time protested in colourful language it learned from the part of her that lived in her bank account’s overdraw. Stubbornly, she felt her jaw jut forward, and crossed and uncrossed her arms in unnatural succession. Her eyes flickered over to the Employee list on the wall and found her name. Two donut stickers and squares of citations too numerous to count in the second-long perusal. It wasn’t exactly an encouraging sight. The ratio fell heavily out of her favour. She’d have to be out of her mind to ask for her job back with that kind of performance behind her.

Oddly, the thought perked Melinda up instead. She brushed discouragement behind her and forcibly retracted her jaw and stuck her hands in her pocket to force her body into a less aggressive stance.

She tried a smile, but suspected it came out more of a grimace, and gave it up after a long, awkward moment.

“Look,” she said bluntly, finally offering a response. “I don’t make a fantastic first impression.”

Eric hummed in response, way too good, in Melinda’s opinion, at acting professional.

“One man I interviewed with said he’d be happy to pay the legal fees to have just didn’t like her on my rejected application,” Melinda supplied. “And I don’t know if you know this, but the only reason I got this job in the first place was because the manager before you was dating Carma.”

“I was aware of that, actually,” Eric said quietly.

Melinda continued on, dauntless. “It takes a good, solid three weeks before my charms start to show, you know, and tip the scales in the tolerable direction.”

Under the guise of a nose scratch, Eric hid a small smile, so Melinda bulldozed ahead.

“But,” she added, raising one finger in emphasis. “I _did_ get hired. And I could do it again, somewhere else if needed. It just so happens that my family has had a bit of a crisis, and the time on the job hunt could be better spent hunting dem-something completely different. So, I’m asking for my job back.”

Despite her near slipup, Melinda felt a wave of satisfaction. She’d turned that conversation around into something _almost_ positive and relevant _._

Eric’s voice betrayed none of his thought processes. “I’ve already hired someone to fill your position,” he said finally.

Melinda scoffed and supressed an eye roll. “New Kid sucks,” she declared certainly, to which Eric raised an eyebrow. At his unspoken question, she supplied her reasoning. “This is supposed to be my shift, and yet you’re here instead. The New Kid sucks. They always suck. They don’t know where anything is, need to be controlled like a puppet, call in sick on their third day, and lack any kind of sense at all.”

“And _I_ ,” she contrasted slyly. “Know what to do and where things are.” To prove her point, she adopted the blank face of a new hire with an accompanying thumbs down, then dropped the look, pointed at her smiling face with one hand and flipped the other thumb around.

Eric sighed, but Melinda knew by the half-hearted tone that she was on the right track.

“So… a couple months down the road when New Kid has unexpectedly quit or had to be fired, you’re going to be really grateful your Number Six employee Melinda has been there to pick up the slack.”

A couple of seconds of silence became twenty, and then a full minute, as Eric leaned back into his chair. Melinda held her stance with an iron will, focused entirely on her goal, a mere couple of feet above of her. Doubt and indecision were left on the ground, and she wouldn’t stop over a trifle of feelings.

“Trevor will keep his shifts, but you can take nights.”

“Terrible, but I’ll do it,” she responded immediately.

“I expect you to take over cleaning detail as well.”

She gave him a slight shrug. “I figured.”

Eric pulled out his last card. “And you’ll retake orientation.”

That statement pulled the brakes on her inner celebration. Melinda groaned, audibly, to Eric’s displeasure. “Why?” she drawled, extending the word far past its natural rhythm.

Eric shot her a look that ended her whine. “Because there are a series of segments I believe you need reminding of, namely customer relations and how to handle complaints in a way that doesn’t set the company in legal hot water.”

“Eric, the cappuccino wasn’t even hot! She’d been complaining for too long by then. And her boots covered everything anyway.”

As his response, and in rapid succession, Eric rattled off scenarios. “We would have difficulty proving the liquid was at a temperature that couldn’t cause burns, we definitely couldn’t claim it was an accident, and those boots probably cost more than the cappuccino maker. It was a legal disaster and we got lucky she only wanted to complain about you for thirty minutes.”

Melinda tried to argue that it _was_ an accident, but couldn’t come up with an explanation other than ‘my magical powers went haywire’ and eventually swallowed her protestations, more than a little disgruntled to take the blame for something that hadn’t really been her fault _totally_.

‘ _Rent_ ’ she reminded herself quickly, and agreed to redo orientation.

“If you do these things, and pass a period of probation, I will reinstate you at your previous wage.”

Melinda’s eyebrows shot up. No where in her wildest expectations had she expected to come out above minimum wage.

“Thanks,” she said, slightly mollified.

Never had she imagined Eric, Mr. The (Dead) Event Ends at 9 PM and Not a Minute Sooner, Close Enough is Not Enough, We Are Not Leaving the Staff Room Until Someone Confesses, could be _nice_ to someone in need, even though the recipient (probably) didn’t deserve it.

Briefly, Melinda considered taking a shift for him the next time Hava Java Talent Extravaganza rolled around. She even entertained the gallant notion of not commenting, as per her standard, that the name he chose for that particular event was worse than the ‘ _talent_ ’ which to the staff were forced to give three curt claps. She might even, horror upon horror, retrieve from above the ceiling tile (three across and six up when standing in the kitchen corner) the remote for the sound box so Eric could torture them all with eighteen hours of holiday music six months before and after the holiday season.

Not wanting to do the last part in particular, she went over the conversation in her head while Eric pulled out a stack of papers for her to sign, and remembered that she’d be in the Out Here Shift (as in see you, I’m outta here) for the foreseeable future; annoying slow and stoned patrons, midnight, post-disaster date couples lacking the decency not to fight in the middle of the café, and stupor-inducing inactivity broken only by the desperate three a.m. decision to clean out the steamer and all.

“You’ll start on Wednesday,” Eric said while Melinda stewed. “I’ll have the rest of the month’s schedule by then. None of your personal information has changed?”

“I’m down a roommate,” she commented impulsively, slipping back into a familiar irreverence.

Eric didn’t even blink out of order. “The accountant doesn’t care unless your address has changed. What about your certifications?”

“They’re… in existence,” she answered, unwilling to, in her tenuous new status, commit to knowing the exact location of her certificates. She wasn’t even sure if they were still in the apartment or if they’d been in the bag of uniforms she’d gleefully used as athame target practise. Which, Melinda remembered with a light grimace, meant she’d need to buy more of the stupid shirts.

“Are they up to date?” Eric asked with a sigh.

“Probably?” she guessed.

He didn’t repeat a sigh, but she did catch a brief flash of the white of his eyes as he bent his head and made a note. “I’ll pull up your file and see if anything needs to be changed. I’m guessing you’ll need copies?”

She nodded without shame. “Probably.”

Eric stood and passed her a new set of keys. This set had a butterfly on the keychain that she almost mistook for a set of angel wings. “Come in an hour early on Wednesday so we can get the registration and paperwork out of the way.” He held out his hand. Melinda took it immediately, giving him a firm handshake her dad would be proud of, and true to form, Eric did not comment on the soot and dust clogging her cuticles or the bruises beginning to swallow her knuckles.

Linh offered a high five when Melinda passed back through the kitchen. Now that Melinda was once again employed at Hava Java, the atmosphere welcomed her back with open, barley-scented arms. She left, happy at least to have the unpleasant task over with, and eager to face the next challenge.


End file.
